The new Championship season is already in full flow, with each club in the division having their own individual targets and goals.
West Ham United, Leicester City, Southampton and Middlesbrough will all be hoping they do enough to achieve top two finishes by the end of May.
The Hammers are the only club odds-on to achieve promotion, at 8/11 with
bet365. Sam Allardyce will be pleased to have kept Carlton Cole and seen the Scott Parker saga resolved, with additions such as Kevin Nolan and David Bentley on loan only aiding their cause.
Sven-Göran Eriksson’s big spending Foxes have also been tipped by many to be playing Premier League football next year. They are 15/8 with
William Hill to be promoted at the end of the season, with players like Jermaine Beckford and Matt Mills bolstering a squad which was already strong.
There are also a number of Championship teams that will be pleased to simply remain in the second tier come the end of the campaign.
Doncaster Rovers had a difficult opening to the season, with key man Billy Sharp sustaining a serious injury which has him sidelined for weeks. Donny are as short as 8/15 with
Victor Chandler to suffer relegation, and seem an extremely probable candidate to be competing in League One next term.
Newly-promoted Peterborough are another club who would presumably be content with consolidation, after losing Craig Mackail-Smith during the close-season without purchasing a replacement.
Coral will pay 5/1 on Posh being demoted, with a host of other teams predicted to face more problematical seasons.
However, the NPower Championship is, by its very nature, a tough league to forecast. All teams are capable of beating each other on their day, and this is what adds to the league’s appeal.
This is reflected by sportingbet’s prices on promotion – they have 15 out of the 24 teams in the league at 20/1 or less to go up! Could you imagine this scenario in the Premier League or the Primera Liga?
Realistically, up to half of the clubs within the division can expect to be in with a shout of promotion – something which cannot be said for many other domestic football divisions.
Similarly, there will be clubs involved in a relegation dogfight in March and April who perhaps expected to have half a chance of creeping into the top six.
There will be drama every week as the action unfolds and we’ll be covering it as it happens!